1. Charles Benedict Davenport was a biologist and eugenicist influential in the American eugenics movement.
25 Facts About Charles Davenport
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When he was not studying, Charles Davenport worked as a janitor and errand boy for his father's business.
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Charles Davenport's father had a significant influence on his early career, as he encouraged Charles to become an engineer.
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However, this was not his primary interest, and after working for a few years to save up money, Charles Davenport enrolled in Harvard College to pursue his genuine interest of becoming a scientist.
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Charles Davenport graduated with a Bachelor's after two years, and earned a Ph.
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Charles Davenport married Gertrude Crotty, a zoology graduate of Harvard with whom he would later collaborate closely, in 1894.
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Charles Davenport had two daughters with Gertrude, Millia Crotty Davenport and Jane Davenport Harris di Tomasi.
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Charles Davenport had a tremendous respect for the biometric approach to heredity pioneered by English eugenicists Francis Galton and Karl Pearson, whom he met in London, and was involved in Pearson's journal, Biometrika.
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From 1899 to 1904 Charles Davenport taught at the University of Chicago, where he was curator of the university's Zoological Museum from 1901 to 1904.
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In 1904, Charles Davenport became director of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory.
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Charles Davenport founded the Eugenics Record Office there in 1910, with a grant from railroad heiress Mary Averell Harriman, whose daughter Mary Harriman Rumsey had worked with Davenport at Cold Spring Harbor while she was a student at Barnard College.
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Charles Davenport taught eugenics courses to many people at the Laboratory, including the Massachusetts suffragist Claiborne Catlin Elliman.
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Charles Davenport was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1907, and to the National Academy of Sciences in 1912.
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Charles Davenport's research was guided by the racism and classism of his time, which he bought into wholeheartedly.
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Charles Davenport's work drew more and more criticism over time.
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Charles Davenport was particularly interested in race-mixing, which he saw both as a phenomenon that could shed light on the workings of human heredity and as a threat to society.
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Charles Davenport founded the International Federation of Eugenics Organizations in 1925, with Eugen Fischer as chairman of the Commission on Bastardization and Miscegenation.
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Together with his assistant Morris Steggerda, Charles Davenport attempted to develop a comprehensive quantitative approach to human miscegenation.
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Charles Davenport believed that race determined behavior, and that many mental and behavioral traits were hereditary.
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Charles Davenport drew these conclusions by studying family pedigrees, and was criticized by some of his peers for making unfounded conclusions.
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Charles Davenport spoke regularly with Congressman Albert Johnson, who was a cosponsor of the Immigration Act of 1924, and encouraged him to restrict immigration in that legislation.
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Charles Davenport was not alone in this effort to influence policy, as Harry Laughlin, the superintendent of the Eugenics Record Office, appeared before Congress on multiple occasions to promote strict immigration laws and the belief that immigration was a "biological problem".
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Charles Davenport held editorial positions at two influential German journals, both of which were founded in 1935, and in 1939 he wrote a contribution to the Festschrift for Otto Reche, who became an important figure in the plan to "remove" those populations considered "inferior" in eastern Germany.
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Six years after he retired in 1934, Charles Davenport held firm to these beliefs even after the Carnegie Institute pulled funding from the eugenics program at Cold Spring Harbor in 1940.
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Charles Davenport died of pneumonia in 1944 at the age of 77.